AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I looked around at the four women in their late fifties. I was afraid I would laugh, but for the first time, I realized that they looked formidable. Not because they were particularly big orstrong–they weren’t. But because they would do anything for Quinn. No wonder she had come back here.
“So you’re like the home militia,” I said slowly. “We call you in if I can’t handle Jason Cain?”
“However you want to look at it,” Moira answered. “But none of us can rest easy until he’s out of Quinn’s life.”
“And yours and Noah’s,” my mom added.
I nodded, taking it in. It was weird as shit, but there was something comforting about knowing these four were waiting in the wings.
Besides, I couldn’t wait to see the look on Quinn’s face when she found out.
CHAPTER 21
QUINN
“Our moms?” I repeated. “Like, mine too?”
It had been a few months since I’d seen Moira. I loved her, but it was hard to think of her asmombecause she had changed so much. Mom had worn business suits and kept her hair in a no-nonsense bob that she sprayed into submission with Aquanet. Moira wore long flowing skirts, didn’t bother to keep the gray out of her hair, and apparently vaped. I had a feeling I’d like Moira when I got to know her, but it was hard to separate her from the woman who had raised me. The one who had been a suit of armor around averyfree spirit. It made me a little sad, thinking about how long she wore her armor when she really didn’t have to. Maybe I subconsciously knew, and that was why I’d gravitated toward the unconventional myself.
“All four of them,” Callum confirmed. “They’re just waiting for Jason to take a step out of line.”
A laugh bubbled up in my throat. “Of course they are.”
Callum raised his eyebrows. He didn’t see what was soof courseabout a quartet of late-fifties women planning to take out a slimy snake like Jason Cain if he so much as flicked his forked tongue in my direction.
“They’re belles,” I explained. “Belmont Springs women.”
He frowned. “Like the band?”
“No, the band is like them. That’s what they called themselves back in the day.” Back then, all four of our mothers had seemed so proper. Looking back, though, I saw the signs. The treehouses, for one thing. They’d let us practically live in them. They’d let us practice in their basements. They’d had to have known about some of the parties we threw down there–the people we snuck in through the narrow hopper windows. They’d let us do it because they understood who we were. Because we weren’t so different from them.
I knew Mia, Joanne, and Renee would have my back no matter what.
It made sense that the moms did, too.
I didn’t bother explaining this to Callum though. He had this mystifying notion that Belmont Springs was so provincial, soindigent, that the only thing to do was to put as much money as he could between himself and the way he’d grown up. He didn’t see how special it was. How the roots we grew there were intertwined for life. Waterford Village was beautiful and meticulous, but it seemed like everything was on the surface. I’d been living in Callum’s house for over two weeks now, and not a single neighbor had dropped by. You couldn’t go a whole afternoon in Belmont Springs without someone letting themselves in. It was the wilds of Belmont Springs that hadgiven me strength my whole life. I’d felt it, even in LA. When things were hard, and when they started to get really bad there at the end, I’d been connected to something bigger and stronger than myself.
Of course I’d come running back to it.
Of course it had been here to protect me.
Of course the moms were gathering.
Because explaining felt impossible, I kissed Callum instead. “How are things going with the contract renegotiation?” I hadn’t asked because I didn’t want to know. I assumed there was no way things would be going smoothly. Jason didn’t work like that. And I didn’t want Callum’s paranoia kicking in again. Since their semi-successful lunch, he’d seemed almost relaxed, like it was just a matter of crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s.
Now though, his forehead creased and his mouth tightened. “He’s stalling. I don’t know why.”
Because he’s a terrible human being, I wanted to say, but didn’t. Noah was right there in the next room. I could hear him picking out chords with his small fingers. He was trying not to use the pick because he wanted to develop calluses like mine.
I wished I hadn’t brought the subject up. Callum and I were in the kitchen, making separate dinners side by side. He wanted steak, and I wanted a Mediterranean salad. My quinoa was cooking beside the red meat. I was cutting up cucumbers while he sliced an onion. There was an unspoken competition to see whose tasted better–as determined by Noah.
“Noah loves a filet,” he’d said casually when we started. “He’s been eating them since he was four.”
“That’s because Noah has never had a cucumber, much less quinoa.”
At the mention of Jason, I felt the humor drain out of Callum’s body. I wished I could take back the question, but I wanted to know. As much as I wanted Callum to relax, I sometimes felt like I’d turned my back on a wild animal that could attack at any moment. By ignoring the situation, I was keeping my eyes closed, my face averted. If I couldn’t see it, it couldn’t see me.
But Jason Cain had an almost omnipresent ability to see everything. Especially when he felt like someone was fucking him over.
